A functional approach to explanation-seeking curiosity

Liquin, Emily; Lombrozo, Tania

doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101276

Cited by 68 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…As one example, Law et al (2016) showed that incomplete information (i.e., inducing an information gap) can be used to prompt curiosity and motivate participants in crowdsourcing tasks. Finally, the rational model of curiosity (Dubey & Griffiths, 2017, 2020), while relatively new, is consistent with work showing that a scientific topic's perceived usefulness is a strong predictor of an individual's curiosity and motivation to learn about it (Dubey et al, 2019; Liquin & Lombrozo, 2020; Rossing & Long, 1981).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity

2021

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Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: The social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Participants were presented with everyday questions about science from a popular on‐line forum, and these were shown with a high or low number of up‐votes as a social cue to popularity. Participants indicated their curiosity about the answers, and they were given an opportunity to reveal a subset of those answers. Participants reported greater curiosity about the answers to questions when the questions were presented with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes, and they were also more likely to choose to reveal the answers to questions with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes. These effects were partially mediated by surprise and by the inferred usefulness of knowledge, with a more dramatic effect of low up‐votes in reducing curiosity than of high up‐votes in boosting curiosity. Taken together, these results highlight the important role social information plays in shaping our curiosity.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity

2021

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“…Many parent-child conversations are sparked by children's question (Renaud et al, 2015). There has been a wealth of research on children's question asking (for a review see Ronfard et al, 2019), suggesting that question-asking is an important mechanism of cognitive development (Liquin & Lombrozo, 2020). Past research has explored the content of children's questions in general (Chouinard, 2007), during everyday conversations about science (Crowley et al, 2001, Jipson & Callanan, 2003, and with respect to death (Gutiérrez et al, 2019;Renaud et al, 2013Renaud et al, , 2015.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“When will it be over?” U.S. Children’s Questions and Parents’ Responses about the COVID-19 Pandemic

Menéndez¹,

Klapper²,

Golden³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, resources informing parents on how they should discuss the topic with their children surfaced. However, little is known about the questions that children ask about COVID-19 (and the pandemic in general) and how parents respond to those questions. In this exploratory mixed-method study, we recruited 349 predominantly White U.S. parents with children between the ages of 3 and 12 to examine children’s questions and parents’ answers about the COVID-19 pandemic. We found children primarily asked about lifestyle changes that occurred as a result of the pandemic. Parents answered questions by emphasizing that the purpose of different preventative measures were designed to protect the child, the family or society at large. Our results suggest that providing parents information about how to discuss lifestyle changes (rather than just the virus) with their children might help prepare parents to provide better answers to their children questions.

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“…Some trivia questions were supplemented in our studies. In previous studies, researchers used trivia questions to induce epistemic curiosity (Ligneul et al, 2018;Liquin & Lombrozo, 2020;Marvin & Shohamy, 2016). The trivia questions we used were adapted from the research of Liquin and Lombrozo (2020).…”

Section: Trivia Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous studies, researchers used trivia questions to induce epistemic curiosity (Ligneul et al, 2018;Liquin & Lombrozo, 2020;Marvin & Shohamy, 2016). The trivia questions we used were adapted from the research of Liquin and Lombrozo (2020). First, a total of 59 Chinese version questions with four different kinds of questions, whose contents include physics, human physiology and psychology, animal, and human history, We took into account of the cultural differences between participants of Liquin's research and our research, so we tested the epistemic curiosity of Chinese participants on these questions, and questions with the lowest average curiosity score of 10% were excluded.…”

Section: Trivia Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The above classification has been widely used in curiosity research. Former scientists mainly used the blurred pictures paradigm to induce participants' perceptual curiosity (Jepma, Verdonschot, Van Steenbergen, Rombouts, & Nieuwenhuis, 2012), while epistemic curiosity is induced by using the trivia paradigm (Ligneul, Mermillod, & Morisseau, 2018;Liquin & Lombrozo, 2020;Marvin & Shohamy, 2016). As for social interaction, is crucial for people to get to know each other, which is called Interpersonal curiosity (IPC), an individual's desire for new information about other people, including other people's life experience, habits, and details, as well as thoughts, feelings, and interests (Li & Yu, 2015;Litman & Pezzo, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

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How anxiety predicts interpersonal curiosity during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediation effect of interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency

Huang¹,

Cao²,

Zhou³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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With the world-wide implementation of quarantine to suppress the spread of the COVID-19, people, having weathering a hard time, are confronted with an alarming state of mental health. For people who have taken self-quarantine at home for a long time, the anxiety and the new “staying home normality” may undermine their desire to seek information and thus might have negative effects on their curiosity. Here, we explored and examined how anxiety and the effect of quarantine regulations during the public health emergency predict different kinds of curiosity. With 1071 participants, we conducted an exploratory study (N = 570) and a confirmatory study (N = 501), with measures of anxiety, curiosity, interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency etc. There are three main findings in our results: (1) trait anxiety had negatively indirect impact on trait curiosity and the time spent on update of the COVID-19 information, however, no such correlation was found between state anxiety and epistemic curiosity; (2) state anxiety has negatively indirect impact on perceptual curiosity through increasing interpersonal distancing during quarantine; (3) interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency have negatively indirect impact on interpersonal curiosity. These effects suppressed the positive prediction of anxiety to interpersonal curiosity. Our research provides insights for the relationship between quarantine, anxiety and curiosity during the COVID-19.

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A functional approach to explanation-seeking curiosity

Cited by 68 publications

References 65 publications

Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity

Curiosity Is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity

“When will it be over?” U.S. Children’s Questions and Parents’ Responses about the COVID-19 Pandemic

How anxiety predicts interpersonal curiosity during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediation effect of interpersonal distancing and autistic tendency

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